Tantra Newsletter: Merging Sex, Love and Spirit through Tantra – 2

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Somraj

Tantra Doesn’t Divide Sex and Spirit, Orgasms and the Divine

Last month I sent you part 1 of this article. Here is the second half which dives into pleasure, love, and the merger of chakras energies.

(If you missed the first installment, you can read it in our archives here… http://www.tantraattahoe.com/news/10272016.htm )

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“Sacred Sexual Secrets” Newsletter #295 published 7/24/18

Published by Somraj Pokras & Jeffre TallTrees http://www.TantraAtTahoe.com

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This free ezine (scroll to the end if you want to unsubscribe) offers practical sex tips derived from modern sex research and the ancient wisdom of Tantra and the Kama Sutra. We teach Supreme Bliss Tantra to help you deepen relationship intimacy and reach astounding heights of sexual ecstasy through long-distance learning and hands-on training. Our Motto: Deeper Into The Heart Of Sex

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PLEASURE

Don’t you agree that you want all of your lifeforce energies alive and percolating when you couple? If something is bugging you, or if you have a desire that hasn’t been fulfilled, or if you don’t feel you have enthusiastic consent to take your relationship to a higher place, then you’ll have energy that’s not connecting with your partner’s.

To deal with disconnects, it helps to understand the role of pleasure in a Tantric life.

When you look at the choices you make, you’ll see that at some level you believe what you decide will make you feel better. But too often it doesn’t turn out that way.

To many people navigate through life based on what they think they’re supposed to do, what others want them to do, or what’s expected of them. That’s not how the Tantric attitude operates.

Instead of being motivated to avoid discomfort, embarrassment, or pain in life, Tantra guides us to directly and actively seek what makes us feel good. Cut out the middle man and go right for the gusto.

Which is why one of Tantra’s basic principles is, ”Nothing is more important than that you feel good right now.”

To do this you need to learn to heighten your experience of the moment, get in touch with your feelings, and judge what brings you pleasure. Then, according to the Tantric sages, your life will expand and evolve just the way you want it to.

Since many of us are programmed with a strong injunction against selfishness, this Tantric guideline is hard for many to swallow. We’re raised believing that thinking only of ourselves is a big sin. So we don’t put enough attention on our own mental health and physical well-being. As a result, we feel guilty when we look after ourselves or we do things that don’t bring us joy. Which makes us stressed, moody, grumpy, and resentful.

Tantra doesn’t encourage you to exclude other’s feelings, needs, and happiness. It just teaches that in order to help others, give emotional support, and be there for them, you’ve got to look after our own self first.

Only when you’re feeling good and your spirit is soaring can you truly love.

Wouldn’t it be better to be happy so you’re more able to cheer up everyone around you? Would you rather have a depressed lover who clings to you or an independent one who bubbles over with their zest for life and drags you forward instead of backwards?

That’s the spirit of Tantra in a relationship. Do your own personal work and grow spiritually so you can fully connect at body, mind, and soul with your beloved.

RELATIONSHIP

If you embrace the Tantric attitude described above, you’ll be much more lovable and capable of loving.

It’s a Tantric truth that one who seeks love with a mate, family, community, or world, must first be in a joyous place. Then you’re more whole, more complete, more present. If you’re only 10% present, there’s only a little part of you to love. And it may well be the most tarnished part.

Compassion from a dejected soul brings down the recipient. Buddha was renown for the compassion he felt for all living things. That compassion sprang from his heart when he became enlightened and wholly himself.

We’re all conditioned with the expectation that loving someone means to think of them first, which is of course in stark contrast to the Tantra ideals we’ve explained. Are you the primary one who’s responsible for your beloved’s feelings, reactions, and happiness? Most relationships, after the initial honeymoon, settle in to a parade of resentments focused on the other person…

— “What you said hurt me.”

— “If you loved me you would have done it.”

— “I don’t know if I can forgive you for felling that way.”

All of these are based on unexpressed expectations. Tantra teaches us to approach each new moment without expectation. Certainly we have desires and intentions, especially of the ones we love. But walking into any situation with the requirement that it follows certain rules or ends with defined outcomes is a surefire prescription for frustration. Which too often results in us blaming our beloved.

As a result of surviving lots of struggles and eventually finding some happiness, I’ve settled on what to me is a primary Tantric rule of relationships, ”Look at yourself and things get better, look at the other and they get worse.”

Looking after yourself isn’t selfish. It’s the most giving thing you can do to maintain your aware, vibrant, loving spiritual center.

This is how Tantric personal responsibility becomes the springboard for honest communication, deeper intimacy, and the hottest sex of your life. Instead of being dependent on your mate’s struggles, successes, and swings of mood, you become more and more stable yourself. Then there’s more of you to love, be loving, and uplift the one you care the most about.

MERGER

That’s a little about the Tantric approach to merging love, sex, and spirit.

Tantric lovemaking is as much about harnessing your sexual energy consciously as it is about sexual techniques. You reach more intense levels of ecstasy by accessing the huge inner reservoirs of untapped power that lie dormant within. When you make love Tantrically, you maximize the flow of orgasmic energy within you and between you and your lover.

Learning Tantric lovemaking can help you become the blissful, playful, energetic lover you were born to be. A lover who has the desire and capacity for making love last for hours. A lover who gives and receives untold pleasure and stronger ecstasy regardless of your gender or sexual preference.

One thing that sets a Tantric relationship apart is how much sexual ecstasy you can create and how long you can make it last. Ecstasy is the overwhelming feeling of excitement, joy, and happiness that produces a trancelike state of euphoric rapture.

Whatever your gender identity and sexual preferences, you still need to blend masculine and feminine energies. All bodies have the potential for awakening your inner Shiva and your inner Shakti. It takes finding all parts of yourself to do this.

That’s the Tantric prescription for ecstatic love, sex, and spiritual connection.

Love,

Somraj

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SUPREME BLISS TANTRA

Supreme Bliss is the zenith of sexual ecstasy which transforms orgasmic energy into expanded consciousness.

Supreme Bliss Tantra is the modern system of personal transformation based on the ancient Eastern spiritual path which uses sexual energy practices to…

– deepen love and intimacy,

– extend lovemaking, and

– create continuous full-body mind-altering Tantric Orgasms.

By opening your senses of the present moment, embracing all of life and all of your being, and focusing on pleasure as a divine gift, Supreme Bliss Tantra…

– heals your mind, body, and spirit,

– connects you passionately with your deeper self and your beloved, and

– immerses you deeply into the untold joys of sacred sexuality to

reach cosmic peaks of pleasure to make life an ecstatic journey in total communion with all that is.

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How a Foursome Became an Orgy with our Best Friends by Letting Her Be On Top

Posted on May 13, 2017 by Somraj

If You Want the Passion to Be Real, You Can’t Pressure a Lover to Love You

At times some women get off on being taken.

I still remember fondly that cute young thing I met at a party who kept yelling at me, “Fuck me harder!” Frankly, it was a bit intimidating. But I did what I was told and we both had a great time.

Do you get off on walking on the wild side? Do you or your partner like rough sex? Undoubtedly it can be a turn-on to submit to another’s control. Maybe that’s why the slave-master fantasy is popular.

That reminds me of a famous science fiction series I read in the sixties. There were I think a couple dozen volumes in John Norman’s Chronicles of Counter-Earth. The story was set in a planet directly opposite the earth that had a medieval culture. Specifically, women were property and men were warriors. Yet, the women reveled in pleasing their men.

I think the belief that Norman was promoting so creatively was that this is only way the “weaker sex” can ever be sexually fulfilled.

Honestly, I enjoyed the books back then before I’d had any training as a Tantric lover who worships the Goddess in all women. Now I’m appalled at any stories about spousal or sexual violence.

Now I’m not advocating that abuse or rape is a good thing. Rather, I notice that it’s hot for some women at certain times to be restrained, dominated, disciplined, and punished.

Enthusiastic Consent Is Essential

There’s a right and wrong way to do this of course. In the BDSM world (bondage, domination, discipline, submission, sadism, masochism), negotiating consent is essential. So I have no problem with any practices that are discussed, planned, and agreed-upon in detail.

Negotiating consent requires mutual respect for the submissive’s power. If it turns a woman on for her partner to blindfold her, tie her up, and have his way with her, who am I to object. That is, when she clearly asks for it. Or she gave permission for him to do whatever he wants. Of course, wise players always have a safeword if it gets too intense.

Even though I’m an old guy, I guess that makes me a raving feminist. Well, so be it.

But without explicit consent, selfish exploitation amounts to taking advantage of a woman. In practice, this shows up as pressuring a partner to have sex. That might include a demand to give blow jobs, to receive anal sex, or to orgasm and even ejaculate on command.

Though we loved every episode of Fifty Shades of Grey, I winced every time Christian said “Come for me, baby.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love doing these things to a willing playmate. I love doing whatever I’m moved to do with a woman who really wants it. I love her screaming and jackknifing at my slightest touch.

Without a doubt, I really get off on a partner’s sexual pleasure, orgasm, and satisfaction.

Pressure Doesn’t Work

But pressuring a woman to perform on command just doesn’t seem to work for me. In fact, it makes me sick.

Unfortunately, pressure can block some women’s pleasure so much that it becomes abuse. Demanding she put out can block her enjoying it if she doesn’t consent.

We have to recognize that men in our modern world are conditioned to go for the gold, compete against all opponents, and push through obstacles. Yet this kind of conditioning is diametrically opposed to what most women need to blossom orgasmically.

So the question I want to address is how to get a woman to want it.

I spent a lot of years getting rejected and not getting any. And with my rampant libido, “no” was the last thing I wanted to hear. So I did my share of pressuring and demanding and pursuing without much luck. Fortunately, I didn’t take it to the extreme of stalking and the like.

Like any partnered guy, I’ve heard my share of not tonight, I’ve got a headache, and it doesn’t feel good down there. In response, I developed an approach that sometimes pays off.

My No-Pressure Desire Philosophy

I call it No-Pressure Desire. This philosophy basically says, “You’re beautiful, you’re sexy, I want you, I’m here, I’m interested — you pick the time and place.”

Here are some examples of how this works in practice. My wife loves sex more than any female I’ve ever known. And she’s damn good at it.

But she’s easily distracted. That doesn’t mean she’s shy or inhibited. It means the temperature in the room has to be right. The music and lighting have to create the perfect mood. She has to have her favorite glass of wine, and often something more. The dogs have to be OK so she doesn’t worry about them. And, I almost forgot, I have to be at least a little romantic.

I agree an erotic ambience has a strong effect on me, too. But when I’m hot to trot, hey baby, let’s trot. But I’ve learned that I need to heed my No-Pressure Desire policy. Part of that is helping to get each of us and the room ready. Starting without her total readiness never works. Otherwise the series of interruptions seriously bums me out.

The good news is that when everything is right, the passion is boundless.

Our closest girlfriend has many of the same requirements. But with her it’s as much about the mood as the time and place. She’s a dedicated planner-in-advance with a bursting schedule. Being a professional colonic therapist, extensive cleansing inside and out is essential for her comfort. Otherwise she holds her gargantuan libido back. Once she’s in the state of erotic rapture, the sky’s the limit.

Getting Janice to Play Again

I started thinking about all this recently while missing another of our closest lovers. Let’s call her Janice.

Janice has been going though some dramatic personal changes. She’s totally absorbed in building a demanding business which takes its toll on her energy. So after years of wild parties a couple times a month with no holds barred, she backed off. We still saw a lot of her and found our love and relationship growing deeper. But for many months only her husband accepted our invitations to play.

I have to admit to viscerally missing our erotic times together. When Janice and I make love, we blow the roof off. We roll around, vibrate all over, and scream bloody ardor.
But what was I to do?

Pressure her to play, offer her inducements, manipulate the circumstances, take advantage of her sweet loving nature?

Aside from the fact that coercion is not my way, it was clear from the get go that these tactics would backfire. Which brings me to my main point.

What is the nature of woman and how do we as their lovers meet them on as many levels as possible?

In Tantric terms, sexual energy — just one expression of the life force — is feminine. Modern teachers call this the power of the divine feminine. New agers typically refer to it as the Goddess in all women.

If you buy this, then you recognize that we both have to honor the river of life in our female partners. When it’s flowing freely, desire, love, passion, orgasms, and sexual ecstasy are abundant. When it’s blocked or constrained, not so much.

So to apply my No-Pressure Desire philosophy, I gave Janice space. I stayed in touch, asked how she was doing, and respected her choices. I tried to major in empathy and compassion with as little judgment as possible.

After about a year of this, I called her up and said, “I miss you. What do you need to be comfortable enough to enter our play space again?”

She said she still loved me and our hot times together, but was sorting things out and still needed more time. How about the summer still months away when work pressures would be less? Absolutely, I said. I was thrilled to hear we had a future together in spite of the vague commitment.

She Just Showed Up Suddenly

Then all of a sudden she showed up at a threesome we had scheduled with her husband. He and my wife make beautiful loud music together if you catch my drift.

Janice was hesitant at first, cautiously feeling her way. We spent some hours talking and massaging each other which got us all naked. Gradually her hands spent more and more time around my crotch with visible hard results. That’s when I decided to take a chance and asked, “What would you like?”

She didn’t say anything at first. She just pushed me onto my back and climbed on top. Oh, wow, so long in coming. But I didn’t since I was enjoying it so much that I wanted it to last.

Though she was quieter than I remembered, she got wilder and wilder as she rode me. And then started screaming in joy at pleasure peak after peak.

After a while I asked if I could get on top. She looked off into space obviously thinking. But then without a word, she pushed me down again and rode me even harder. We had a couple more rounds later after each spending time with our spouses. When we finally collapsed exhausted hours later, it left me thinking about why I was so lucky. Here’s what I came up with.

I respect the boundless strength that is deep with women. I don’t presume to know what’s best for them. Instead I inquire what they want, accept what they choose, and go with the flow wherever I can.

In modern spiritual terms, I honor however the Goddess shows up in each woman.

Or we could leave out the new-agey stuff and look at it terms of sovereignty. If you love someone, you have to accept them as they are and respect their choices.

With Janice, I had to let her walk her path and support her process. She needed the space and time to find her own truth before committing even tentatively to walking on the wild side again.

Let’s say I instead had used my wisdom and experience to shunt her into a growth path that I thought would ease her stress and encourage her sex drive. If it didn’t work, she would have resented it, creating even more distance. If it did, she might become dependent on my insight to deal with her own decisions. Either way, her innate confidence and power wouldn’t have grown.

Two Powerful Beings Letting Themselves Connect

You see, the kind of love we all embrace is when two powerful beings let themselves connect on all levels. Though I doubt it, I might have gotten Janice to do my bidding. But then we’d be playing the slave-master scenario and likely without full-hearted consent. I probably would have violated her boundaries or at least thrown her far outside her comfort zone. I would become the evil perpetuator not the loving partner.

There’s an old moral to the story from the Orient of what happens when you save someone’s life. They believe that you’re forever responsible for the life you saved. So even if I succeeded in resurrecting Janice, would she really be choosing to love me?

I knew when she chose to climb on top, have her way with me, and shout her passion to the universe, that it was totally real.

It’s all about volition. I want a lover who chooses me with her free will. There’s no way to get to that kind of relationship through pressure. If I trespassed on her boundaries, would she ever trust me again? If I assumed I knew better and usurped her power, would I really be connecting with the real Goddess inside her?

Of course, it certainly helped that my wife encouraged us to have all the fun we could. While she was doing the same thing.

Sometimes I fantasize about a playmate who’s up for spontaneous romping anytime, anywhere. Frankly, that may be a pipe dream. Before it comes true, I’m content to follow my lovers’s lead. And why not? It gets me where I want to go eventually.

Love, Somraj

2 Keys to Consensual Non-Monogamy: How to Grow Your Relationship by Playing Around Openly Without Cheating

Posted on March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 by Somraj

We attended a fascinating SexPositive Reno Meetup earlier this week about Ethical Non-Monogamy, sometimes called Consensual Non-Monogamy. If those terms are new to you, we’re talking about having sexual and love relationships with more than person at the same time. Openly, honestly, and intentionally.

This sometimes looks like swinging from internet hookups, sex parties, and swing clubs. Other times it’s called polyamory, having multiple acknowledged love relationships. There are as many ways to relate to more than one than there are personal opinions about politics. But they’re all based on the premise that you can love more than one, that you can screw more than one, and you can still love the one you’re with even more.

The reality is that we all have a huge untapped capacity to love and make love with more than one. Can you love more than one sport, music group, or hobby? Can you have more than one BFF? Can you love your parents, your kids, and your spouse at the same time? Sure you can.

Being alive means you will be attracted to others. Whatever your age, intelligence, education, culture, or lifestyle, life will trigger desires, urges, and fantasies that involve others. The question is how do we deal with them. The default for most traditionalists is to suppress these attractions, hide them, and keep them secret. Now how well does that work for you? It’s never worked for me. But I’ve always negotiated at least the freedom to have them, reveal them, and enjoy them even when my agreements didn’t give permission to pursue them.

ENM or CNM is a far cry from giving in to secret desires, clandestine flings, private internet flirting, and cheating. Eharmony did a study that showed 75% of men and 68% of women have cheated at some point in their relationships. As a lifelong rebel, I don’t think outside affairs are so bad if they’re done openly. But if that many partners are lying about it, you can understand why breakups and divorces are so prevalent. And you can see why so many people are questioning the cultural standard of being faithful to just one partner.

Several studies have shown that about 5% of the population publicly acknowledges that they practice some form of non-monogamy.

Dealing With Jealousy and Drama

The Meetup presenter, Kim, was a woman who was experienced, had been a sex worker at one time, but was never comfortable in a monogamous relationship. Though she came across as a little shy and nervous, the balanced, rational thinking that her slides showed was brilliant. The more Kim talked, the more I was attracted to her. (Sorry, that’s not my point here.)

Much of the rousing discussion amongst some veterans and some newbies centered around the challenges of these non-traditional love structures. Top of the list was jealousy which many adherents call “the green eyed monster.” Making agreements and dealing with expectations, especially unspoken ones, figured in prominently. As well, there was lots of talk about the whole range of emotions such practices can stir up.

The tried-and-true rules for managing drama and upsets all center around dealing with lovers’ insecurities. Will he be a better lover than me? Will she fall in love with him and leave me? What’s wrong with me if he/she wants to be with someone else?

I know the knee-jerk reaction of most people, myself included, is to blame, judge, and criticize our partner when we get emotionally charged. But as the speaker pointed out, that doesn’t work. From her extensive experience, she proposed that an essential discipline to making open relationships work is self-awareness. You know, being willing, able, and committed to looking at yourself.

That’s been my belief in my twenty-something years of experimenting. In fact, I once coined Somraj’s Relationship Rule: “Look at yourself and things get better, look at the other and they get worse.”

Kim gave us workable tools to use and insightful questions to ask ourselves. These processes that worked for her can help us look inside and find what’s causing a dramatic reaction out of proportion to what’s actually going on. Often, the root cause is an earlier unresolved hurt or trauma. Undisclosed expectations or unstated agreements cause a lot of these stressful conflicts. Sometimes it’s an inherited or programmed belief that just isn’t serving you.

I remember one of our first adult play parties. We made an agreement that we wouldn’t go off with someone else without checking in with our partner first. Maybe just two hours later my sweetie went into our bedroom with some hot hunk without telling me. At first, I was pretty pissed-off until I considered who I was in relationship with. She was a spontaneous, passionate, and willful woman. That I love. When I considered if she could be herself and enjoy life following our agreement, I changed my belief. I decided to trust that she loved me no matter what she did. And that new premise has been serving us both for the last fifteen years in and out of multiple extended romantic and erotic connections.

So if you don’t have the tools and dedication to witness what’s going on inside yourself and change when necessary, don’t try CNM.

There’s A Second Key

After we talked about the Meetup, I realized there was another element to making self-awareness work. Partner-awareness.

Now I know my rule says if you look at the other party things get worse. But this is different. It’s not judging them harshly, no far from it. Partner-awareness means looking at the situation from your partner’s point of view. What’s their personal perspective? How do they see things? How are they experiencing what’s happening?

When I recalled the earlier example, I remembered trying to put myself in her shoes. I tried to figure out why she would go into the bedroom with that guy just after we’d agreed to check-in first. Knowing her, it was clear she was swept away with his attention, inspired by his romanticism, and turned-on by the erotic possibilities. All of that was completely non-mental which is, of course, where agreements and the ability to follow them come from. Putting myself in her position was how I decided to change my belief about her fling. If I wanted the freedom to get infatuated like she did, could I give her the freedom to go with the flow? I decided yes.

The first spiritual philosophy I studied called this “granting of beingness.” When you take the time and trouble to deeply understand WHO that other person is, you’ll be comprehending their being fully. Then the question becomes, “Is it OK with me for them to be the way they are?” Can I grant them the right to be themselves? Or more simply, can I accept them as they are? Can I just let them be?

If you really love someone, you’ve got to answer a resounding “YES!” But unless we can get through our own garbage and clearly see life through their eyes, how can we honestly grant them the right to be themselves?

As deranged as I can be during relationship stress, I’ve always wanted to let my partner be, grow, and evolve totally in harmony with who their inner being is guiding them to be. Sometimes I’m better at practicing my rule than others. But I always come back to this center. Am I loving some mocked-up image of my beloved, or the real authentic person I fell for?

I think this highlights a major problem in so many modern relationships. To get along, some people need to get their partner to change so they don’t push their buttons. Or satisfy some antiquated social norms. Or meet some fantasy of soul-mate-ness.

The Bottom Line

Relationship is personal growth experience. If you’re willing to look at yourself and see things from your beloved’s point of view, you’ll learn how to be a better partner. And if your partner does the same, so will they. And things will get better.

If you’re not getting along emotionally, in bed, dealing with money, parenting, and staying healthy, I don’t recommend jumping into ENM or CNM. Because it will put lots more pressure on your one-on-one connection. And it can result in explosive drama. If you can’t handle the stuff that normal life together brings up, will you be able to handle all that extra garbage?

But if you’re harmonious and in love, you might well find yourselves wanting more. You can love more than one and you can enjoy sex and intimacy with more than one. And with the right approach, you can do it together.

Just be aware that when you go for the gold of open relationships, lots more stuff will likely come up. Be prepared to deal with it.

At the end of the Meetup I did pipe up that just dealing with the negatives was depressing. My life is so much fuller because I have other lovers. In fact, we’re celebrating this weekend because a long-time boyfriend is joining us for a little party for the first time in six years.

Is it worth it? For us, absolutely. I guess you’ve got to decide if it’s worth it to you. The two of you.

Love, Somraj