Secrets of the
Orgasmic Response
“Getting done.”
As a sexual invitation, it doesn’t sound very romantic, does it? But this was the next challenge for me on my quest for bliss, my ongoing exploration into the world of sexual Tantra.
Even though, by 1985, I had created the first SkyDancing Tantra Institute in France 40 and was sharing my discoveries with hundreds of people in the Love and Ecstasy Training, I was still eagerly studying new ways to understand sex, love, and orgasm.
In doing so, I found myself in California, staying in the Bay Area, receiving coaching sessions from teachers at More University, a community founded near Oakland by Dr. Victor Baranco.
According to the More approach, the key to a fulfilled love-life lay in the ability of a woman to allow her clitoris to be pleasured by her partner. This was done separately from intercourse, as an exercise in itself, and could be developed to a high art, until a woman learned to climax quickly and completely in the deft hands of an experienced practitioner.
This was called “getting done.”
I was intrigued and not just for myself. I saw the enhancement of orgasm as a way of heightening the effect of my Tantra trainings by creating a clearer connection between sexuality and spirituality. I was already teaching people about sexual healing and the movement of energy through the chakras. If, somehow, the power of orgasm could be enhanced and expanded, this would give a boost to the whole process.
To me, the experience of orgasm has always been one of the great mysteries. What happens when we make love? It is like a symphonic orchestra. So many instruments start to play their unique notes, releasing different vibrations: the heart beats faster, the blood runs wilder, the breathing opens more deeply, the cells in the body are electrified, the skin prickles and sweats. All of this helps to bring the energy to a delicious crescendo.
But orgasm is more than a sum of these parts. It takes us beyond physical sensations, moving us profoundly—when we are lucky to be in tune—from head to toe and out into the cosmos. Where do we go, then, when we enter this blessed state? What is orgasm, really, when it occurs simultaneously in body, mind, and spirit?
Answering those questions was my fascination. I already knew, from my first lovemaking experience, that an orgasm can be an energy event that expands beyond the body and becomes luminous bliss.
I knew from studying Tantra, and many forms of therapy, that the marriage between Shakti and Shiva, symbolizing energy and consciousness, was the key. Energy follows consciousness. Consciousness expands energy by becoming aware of it.
In my experience, Shiva embodies pure consciousness and Shakti embodies the power of that consciousness as energy in movement. The union between Shiva and Shakti, in basic Tantric cosmology, is what gives birth to our universe and all its myriads forms.
This is important. It means that our spirituality, seen from a Tantric perspective, can be grounded in an act of love between the masculine and the feminine aspects of the divine.
For someone like me, raised in a Christian culture, you can imagine what a revolutionary idea this was. Rather than having Jesus and his Virgin Mother as holy icons, it was the equivalent of seeing Jesus and Mary Magdalene in a YabYum Tantric embrace.
This may seem outrageous, but this is what is indicated in so many of the Tantric paintings, thangkas, and statues of Tibetan Buddhism, including the golden statue of Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal that I first saw in Paris at the Guimet Museum.
On a more technical level, I was examining every detail of the orgasmic process. There was the sexual orgasm, genitally localized, then the whole-body orgasm, then the brain-related orgasm, which I later discovered involves the pineal gland. Then there was the mysterious X factor of orgasm as a door to meditation and inner space.
At the time of my coaching sessions with More University, I was fortunate to have a young partner called Sergio. He was twenty-eight years old, tall, and well-built, with shoulder-length, black curly hair, a cherubic-looking face, and a youthful, welcoming energy.
We met at a coffee shop in Zurich, Switzerland, and our cup of coffee became a three-hour eye-gazing meditation, deepening into a soul-to-soul communion. Soon thereafter, we acknowledged we were in love.
Sergio had participated in several Tantra trainings and was interested in further explorations. I invited him to move with me to California and he agreed, which was timely because this provided me with an enthusiastic partner to explore what California had to offer in the eighties in the field of sexuality.
My time and investigations in California were important, not only for the coaching we received but for providing me with the ability to compare my vision with other trainings.
I explored Tribal Tantra with Joseph Kramer and Annie Sprinkle, who were both pioneering sex educators and equally at ease with same-sex and heterosexual practices. I studied extended sexual orgasm with Dr. Alan and Donna Brauer, and was—as previously mentioned—ready to learn about “getting done” with trainers from Victor Baranco’s More University.
I realized that many of the American trainings did not include the spiritual dimension of the sexual experience, and neither did they include the art of channeling energy through the chakras.
Some approaches did not focus equally on men and women. Often, practices were all for men, or all for women, whereas I had always made it a point to make sure that all practices were designed for both. I was, and I still am, big on equal respect, dignity, and style of practice for the male and female genders.
In the “getting done” approach, my partner and I first had to break through the “surrender to orgasm” barrier. This may not sound difficult—after all, who doesn’t want to be pleasured to orgasm?—but it proved to be a big challenge for me.
Reflecting the “keep busy” attitude of modern living, it seemed to me there was always something more important to do than to simply lay down on a bed, or couch, and “get done.”
So Sergio and I made a firm commitment to have one session of pleasuring a day, at any time suitable to our schedule. If we were busy in the morning and evening, then it had to happen in the afternoon—but it had to happen. That’s when I adopted the saying “An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away!”
At the beginning of our first coaching session, our teachers had told Sergio, “Margot is a strong-headed and busy woman. You are going to have to grab her by her neck to get her to surrender.”
They also suggested to him, “During the first session, Margot will decide when she is done. The second time, you will decide when to stop. This means it can last as long or as short as you want, and Margot must surrender to that decision.”
So our first session began. I lay down naked, with my legs wide apart, and Sergio applied my favorite lubricant and began to gently pleasure me with his fingers. I guided him to the most pleasurable spot on Clio—my endearing name for the clitoris. I was guiding the speed, the pressure, the exact focus, in order not to lose the precious and pleasurable sensation once we found it. It was an art. Not easy.
Sergio had to find the spot, stay there, and know exactly how to pleasure Clio, according to my guidance: “Go deeper, go slower, stay like that. Yes, that’s it. Now, very light, please, like a feather.”
My greatest challenge was to feel that I deserved all this pleasure. Many times during that first session, I had flashbacks to the past, remembering how I cut short the lovemaking without allowing myself to take the time to reach an orgasm or have the pleasuring continue as long as I needed.
Indeed, too many times I had given up or pretended I was done. But not today. Now, I had this sexy, eager young partner to help me experience the real thing, all the way to the end.
It took two hours for me to go through my fears, my shyness, my resistances. I realized that we women often think that we can do this self-pleasuring stuff better on our own, or we feel that we are being too demanding and our partners may get bored, and certainly these concerns were surfacing in me with Sergio.
In close communication, we spent two hours stalking the clitoral orgasm until finally I had this silent explosion that started as a subtle electric tingle at the root of my Clio and then slowly spread, in a very subtle way, from the root to the tip, then to the rest of the genital area, and then, in waves through the pelvis and the body.
Two hours of “getting done”—can you imagine? I felt grateful to my partner. He was so present, so attentive, so willing.
There are many brave and very present men out there in the world of Tantra, and of Neo-Tantra, and I bow to their courage. Being a man today is not easy. Becoming a Tantric man is even less easy. You have to be in charge and yet you have to listen, learn, and do it right. Well, this time it was a success.
The next day was tough. I had a thousand problems to deal with. My publisher was calling. The manuscript of my next book was late. I felt tense and anxious, miles away from wanting “to get done.”
But our sexual coaches had insisted we stick to our commitment, saying, “You’ll see. When you have an orgasm, the world looks brighter and your sense of humor grows. You don’t take things so seriously. No more dramas.”
Well, I couldn’t quite believe it. Especially not today.
In the afternoon, Sergio used his authority to get me down on the sofa, despite my protests. I was grumbling internally because we had engagements in the evening and there were lots of odds and ends to finish up beforehand.
We started the session, finding the clitoral point, maintaining the pleasure sensation, and then massaging continuously without losing focus. After a while, it began to feel good, and I started to relax.
However, ten minutes into the exercise, Sergio declared, “I have a cramp in my leg. Let’s stop now.”
“But I’m not done!” I exclaimed indignantly. Clearly, I had been spoiled the day before and was shocked by the brevity of this encounter.
“Well, love, I’m sorry, but it’s my turn to decide and I need to stop,” Sergio insisted firmly.
I got up from the couch and returned to the business of the day, feeling totally horny. My yoni was calling and wanted more. At first, I descended into a mood of dissatisfaction and irritation, but then I stopped to watch my own reaction, carefully investigating the physical sensations that were going on in my body.
I discovered something very interesting: it is not the sensations that determine my mood, but the way I interpret them. Something happens in my body and my mind immediately forms an opinion about it, determining if it is good or bad, connecting it to a past memory or a future possibility, and then the whole circus starts: moods, emotions, expectations, interpretations, a storm of reactions and skewed behavior toward others.
Faced with this ungodly abandonment in the middle of a hot and promising climb toward orgasm, I decided to put my negative feelings on hold and just stay with the physical sensation and accept it for what it was: a tingle between the legs.
As I watched, with neutral, almost scientific detachment, the hot charge began to slowly diffuse throughout my body. Okay, I was hot—not just “there,” but all over, from sex to heart, from heart to brain. It was a pleasant feeling. True, I still wanted more in the way of “getting done,” but since this wasn’t an option, I could relax with the unspent charge.
The next day was glorious: I came completely within thirty minutes. By now, we knew the spots and the way to pleasure them. Meanwhile, my publisher was having a fit because of the delay with my manuscript, but I found myself dealing with the situation with humor and detachment. Since I remained calm and helpful, my publisher changed his tone and we ended our conversation in a friendly manner.
I was definitely learning how to be an orgasmic woman, how to apply the teachings of the guru between my legs to all aspects of my life: relax and enjoy!
By now, I was developing my own method, exploring beyond what we had been taught. First, following my principle of sexual equality, we had to find a way of “doing the man.”
In the beginning, when pleasuring Sergio, I felt insecure. I felt that my sense of self-esteem as a woman depended on the behavior of his vajra. If his organ did not respond with an erection, I felt bad and criticized myself for not being a good lover. The habit of feeling responsible for everything was taking over.
This is a big illusion. We are not responsible for someone else’s happiness; or, rather, we are responsible only so far as we stay present in the moment and do the very best we can. After that, it is about how the other person chooses to receive it.
One time, I asked Sergio what he needed during the pleasuring session. What would serve him the best? He answered, “I want you to stay grounded and centered no matter what happens. I feel it when you become insecure and then I lose the pleasure and my erection. Remain centered and strong, and it will all work out.”
That was a piece of advice I never forgot. It has served me well.
Doing Sergio was great. He was learning to have energy orgasms without ejaculating. We were finding out how to stop pleasuring him before the point of no return, then I would gently brush the energy upward toward his heart, away from the engorgement and pulsing excitement in his genitals. At the same time, he was inhaling deeply, pulling the energy up while keeping his pelvic floor muscles lightly contracted to “close the door” below.
He started to feel the excitement as it moved up through his body in the form of vibrations that were streaming toward his heart.
Watching, I had a realization that later became one of the central tenets of my teachings: To cultivate a whole-body orgasm, with or without ejaculation, we need to master the art of staying relaxed in high states of arousal. This is the key to the diffusion of the energy throughout the whole body.
Now that we had understood and mastered how to “do each other,” the next step was to learn what happens when you stimulate internal and external orgasmic points simultaneously.
We discovered that each of us had two major orgasmic trigger points. For the woman, the clitoris, or Clio, is the outgoing point, and the G-spot is the inwardly directed point. For the man, the outwardly directed orgasmic point is the glans, or tip of the penis, while the inwardly directed point is the prostate.
Like the G-spot, the prostate may be only faintly or not at all pleasurable at first, but can become so, with practice. The prostate can be stimulated externally or internally.
Since I have already described the internal stimulation in my book The Art of Sexual Magic,41 I will describe the process here through external stimulation, which can be done by focusing on the man’s perineum point, located between the anus and the testicles. By gently massaging the muscles of the pelvic floor and then pressing deeply with two fingers, one encounters a soft, fleshy area that allows one to stimulate the prostate area.
With this point, the man discovers a very different sensation than that generated by the stimulation of the vajra. It is more like receiving, more like being a woman.
When I pleasured Sergio’s vajra, the natural impulse of his energy was to push up and out, as if his penis wanted to go somewhere—deep in the garden of yoni, no doubt. But when I stimulated his prostate, it was very different. He was being invited to turn his energy within.
So there was a double impulse. The vajra wanted to go outward, while the prostate wanted to be receptive. The idea was that by pleasuring both simultaneously, we would create a balance between Sergio’s masculine and feminine energies.
When the combined arousal peaked, Sergio experienced the energy charge as a succession of internal explosions, soft, powerful, and flowing, a succession of “mini-orgasms.” By ‘“internal,” I mean it was not an outwardly directed release, but rather a silent stream of rising pleasure, manifesting as ripples of energy that were flowing up to his crown, then down through his body. To my delight, he was practically levitating off the bed. Yet he was not ejaculating.
As for my own pleasuring, it followed a similar pattern. When Sergio mastered the art of stimulating my Clio and my G-spot 42 in the right manner and rhythm, I also attained a balance between outer and inner sensations that moved naturally into a streaming flow of energy up through the chakras and then down my body. And I, too, was able to experience a whole series of mini-orgasms, one after the other.
We had touched something significant: the art of developing a multi-orgasmic response in both the man and the woman, and understanding the difference between the explosive orgasm of release and the implosive orgasm of expansion.
The key is the Inner Flute, about which I have already spoken in detail. It is a central channel in the middle of the body, in front of the spine, a conduit through which energies can be circulated.
It allows the sensations of pleasure to be transformed as they move up through this channel, becoming more refined and subtle as they travel away from the excitement of the sexual center. This was a key to transforming lust into bliss.
These practices eventually formed the second cycle of my Love and Ecstasy Training, which I have called developing the multi-orgasmic response. (The first cycle focuses on sexual healing, as described in chapter eight.)
By now, thirty years later, this training has been taught some five hundred times in various countries and has been the inspiration of a whole subculture in many countries, particularly in Germany. Graduates of the Love and Ecstasy Training meet in regional groups to practice the tools they have learned, particularly the sessions of multi-orgasmic response.43
The exercises of the second cycle are an excellent way to help partners learn how they function sexually, how they can give and receive what they want, and how to explore and experience with complete presence and awareness.
Partners cannot do this when they make love in the normal way. They are too close to the action, too “hot” to find some distance and describe their sensations.
When I first started leading groups in the West, around 1981, nobody had heard the word Tantra. Nobody knew what a ritual was. Nobody knew what a Tibetan singing bowl was. Not one therapist used music in their therapy sessions.
As far as I know, I was the first one on the scene. Some deep urge to heal the sexual ignorance and suffering of the world motivated me beyond other considerations. I was always looking for ways of transforming a personal breakthrough into a healing for others.
Even in my private life, in our bedroom, participants seemed to be present with me. I was, so to speak, making love for them, to find a new cure for any number of ailments or complaints. The answers came in the form of visions and guidelines for new exercises and processes that I would then teach in the group room. I will describe these transmissions in chapter twelve.
Meanwhile, leading groups and trainings around the world, I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to establish and honor certain rules for my work. Why? Because I believed Tantra deserved to be resurrected from the somewhat academic and scholarly doldrums in which it had been buried.
It was time for a “Neo-Tantra” that could offer a blend of East and West. Tantra was a rare and precious approach, in my eyes, because it was one of the only spiritual paths that considered sexual energy to be a valuable vehicle for spiritual awakening.
Even though my approach in the early days of developing this work was definitely oriented toward sexuality, I knew that Tantra opened the door to spiritual awakening and I wanted to reintroduce respect for this science in the Western world.
Initially, I had explored Tantra as a rebellion, determined to move beyond society’s rules and norms. In the process, I also found out what doesn’t work and what to do about it, not only in the bedroom but also in the group room.
One important rule was: no lovemaking in the group room. This degree of sexual intimacy must be reserved for the privacy of people’s bedrooms, after group time is over.
The purpose of this rule was to challenge the participants. It was fine for me to teach them a method, to demonstrate an approach, to give them all the explanations, even to show them people doing it in one of the educational films I had created.44
It was also fine for participants to reproduce, step by step, the basic elements of the session in the group room, applying what they’d learned in the demonstration while being coached by us. But after that, outside of the group room, the participants were on their own.
This was important. Now they had to adjust to their chosen partner, establish clear communication, express boundaries, and fumble around until they got it. This “fumbling” was very much part of the learning, because when they got it, it was a victory that could be remembered and repeated. It was theirs.
This approach also minimized the ever-present risk in any group, but especially in a group about sexuality, of transference and counter-transference—in other words, projecting the ideal father and mother on the leaders and then wanting the parents to “do it for you.” Or falling in love with them. Or wanting to be their partner. Or wanting to be the special one for them. Or, if group numbers were uneven, waiting until all partners had been chosen in order to practice with a staff member, the “demigods,” if not with the group leaders themselves.
My effort in my trainings has always been to lead people to their own empowerment, to their own source, and never to become their guru. By helping participants come up with their own truth, out of their own experience, I try to help them take full responsibility for their sexual lives.
This is essential. In his book The Way of Liberation: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Adyashanti says:
There is no such thing as riding the coattails of an enlightened being to enlightenment itself. … While it is understandable that many people project their unresolved parental issues, relationship issues, authority issues, sexuality issues, as well as God issues onto their spiritual teacher, … it is essential to understand that a spiritual teacher’s role is to be a good and wise spiritual guide as well as an embodiment of the Truth that he or she points toward.45
So, in my trainings, a clear pattern of procedure was established. People would learn the process in the group room but would then go to their bedroom—our trainings were residential and lasted eight days—with their partner to do it all over again from scratch.
Daddy and Mommy were no longer available. This was part of growing up, being mature, and, of course, learning how to become a good lover—how to love yourself, how to trust yourself, how to discover what works, how to make it work better.
The exercises, created out of my own personal experience, worked well, and so, in the end, each practice opened the door to love and appreciation. Hearts melted. Each person found that the source was inside. Even further beyond that was the sense of trust and letting go that gradually developed during each training, so that participants could thoroughly enjoy the process, no longer obsessed with doing it “right.” There was no success or failure. It was the process that counted.
We were all learning a new language of Tantric sexuality, love, and intimacy. Those who could speak it noticed that the enhanced communication held keys to a deeper intimacy and a more stable, reliable connection with self and other. When you know that your partner can navigate with you until you have an orgasm every time, you appreciate and respect them.
Since there was no sex in the group room, I had to find a way to teach people how to develop their orgasmic potential and to model the orgasmic response independently of the sexual context—not a simple matter.
I had to do it while staying confident and centered, never for one moment doubting that I was doing the right thing to help the world be a better place for people.
The first step was to encourage awareness, eye-gazing, and communication, so partners could learn how to stay in continuous contact with each other. The second step was to activate both of the brain’s hemispheres: the right being yin, the feeling aspect that has the ability to dive deep into sensations and emotions, and the left being yang, the logical aspect, with the ability to describe and evaluate sensations verbally. The third step was to get both hemispheres to operate simultaneously during pleasuring until they merged in the zero point of orgasm—quite a challenge!
It meant that the receiver was “getting done,” feeling pleasurable sensations, but this yin attitude had to be balanced with the yang, which required the receiver to verbally describe their sexual sensations and guide their partner in the ways of giving pleasure and the places to do it: how quickly, how slowly, how deeply, and so on.
Meanwhile, the giver had a similar opportunity to balance yin and yang, giving the pleasuring massage and at the same time being fully receptive to the guidance of the receiver. This required doing away with the tendency to “know better” what the other needs and projecting one’s own interpretation onto the process.
In the group room, in this mad orgasmic circus, each couple had to create a connection, a sacred space, in which they could be in their own bubble, without being distracted by whatever was happening around them. In itself, this challenge was an excellent training to focus on one’s own pleasure.
This required sustained focus. You had to stay attentive to what was happening inside your body regardless of what was happening outside—a great training in attention and presence.
Everyone noticed how delicate it was to feel such areas as the clitoris or the frenulum 46 and at the same time to find the words to express the sensation and ask for a style of stimulation that felt exactly right.
You can imagine how much resistance and how many taboos one has to transcend in order to participate in this process in a group. Now, many Tantra workshops and trainings offer such practices, but in the eighties and even later, it had not become an accepted part of the general sexual culture.
Naturally, many people experienced a sense of awkwardness at first, but once the person actually began the massage and the pleasuring, things became more relaxed and simple.
After all, these are just parts of the body, like the nose or the fingers. There is no need to make any part shameful or sinful; these are all just old beliefs from a bygone era. If we want to wake up, we need to wake up the whole body, inside and out.
The big question in my trainings was how to elicit, generate, and model the orgasmic process independently of the sexual context, since there was to be no lovemaking in the group room.
I wanted to create something that would be easy for people to remember and integrate into their lovemaking later on, in the privacy of their own bedroom. In fact, I wanted to develop a technique that would be so well integrated that the whole Tantric process would incorporate elements of it spontaneously, effortlessly. And so it happened.
In the normal orgasmic process, excitement can build to a point at which the orgasmic reflex takes over, when the genital muscles begin to vibrate in pulsations that are triggered independently of any mental control.
This streaming effect is what I wanted to reproduce in the group room, as an energy event that could model orgasm yet remain independent of the sexual context. I first got an insight while practicing Kundalini Meditation, which was—and still is—one of most popular daily meditations devised by Osho. The meditation is an hour long and has four stages, each lasting fifteen minutes. In the first stage, as I described in Chapter Four, you let yourself shake. Every part of your body shakes, eliciting a sort of bioelectrical charge that transfers itself from cell to cell, gradually encompassing the whole body.
I took it from there. After studying bioenergetics for three years in Paris and London, I added certain elements to facilitate and enhance the body’s capacity to stream with energy, learning how to stay relaxed during the process. This, in turn, allowed the electrical currents to flow unimpeded through the Inner Flute, the central channel that runs from the perineum to the crown.
I developed this process in many steps and eventually called it the Dynamic Streaming Process. I wanted to avoid the term Kundalini because most people don’t know what that is, or have a vague idea from Indian yoga about coiled serpents resting at the base of the spine. It didn’t help to clarify the process, whereas to talk about dynamic streaming and staying relaxed in a high state of arousal was a better description that could be understood by everyone.
I also adopted an old motto, which I found helpful: “Fake it ’til you make it.” What this meant, in practical terms, was to begin by making the shaking happen in a voluntary way—“doing” the shaking—and then continuing to the point at which people could relax and let go of control, so that the shaking would happen by itself, becoming a more subtle streaming of energy through the body.
This was a key process, a way of helping people move from being anorgasmic to becoming orgasmic again, allowing the whole body to come alive with pleasurable sensations. When they learned to apply this process of allowing the streaming in their lovemaking, the lesson was complete.
There were other, less direct but equally effective methods that I devised to help people become familiar with the flexible, ever-changing nature of human energy.
For example, one of the central teachings of Tantra is that we each have an inner man, a yang energy in us, and an inner woman, a yin energy. Carl Jung, the first Western psychologist to explore these projective and receptive energies, called our inner male polarity the animus and our inner female polarity the anima.47
As we have seen in the description of “getting done,” both yin and yang energies are needed if people are to experience the totality of their orgasmic range.
However, there are many implications, many secret and hidden meanings, that reveal themselves when we explore our inner male and female polarities. We need to confront these truths until they become familiar and we can be comfortable with them.
In some way, the partners we pick in life tend to reflect aspects of our inner man and inner woman. In other words, the outer partner mirrors our inner archetype.
Conversely, the inner also reflects the outer, in the sense that many of the basic attitudes of our inner man and inner woman were formed when we were young, most notably from the imprints we received from our parents.
For example, my inner man was shaped by my early efforts to cope with living with my father, a powerful, authoritarian man who tried to control me. As you may recall, I mentioned this in the first chapter of this book.
In order to survive in our family, I had to make myself strong and stand up to him. This, of course, created many conflicts between us, but it also gave a certain shape and style to my animus, my inner man, who at times—I have to admit—acts remarkably like my father!
Through insights like this, understanding my own inner polarities, it became clear that introducing my group participants to their male and female energies would be a positive experience.
It would benefit them for two reasons:
First, they could discover and explore qualities that were unfamiliar to them. As men, they could come to know how it feels to awaken their inner feminine, how to embrace qualities like receptivity, patience, and intuition. As women, they could come to know how it feels when their inner masculine is empowered, as they develop self-confidence, decisiveness, and action.
Second, they could become aware of patterns and attitudes borrowed from their parents, making friends with these patterns and becoming free of them.
So I incorporated a Yin-Yang game in my training, which could be done in the group room or, more privately, at home.
I already described a version of the Yin-Yang game in chapter four while recounting my love affair with Miles. But there is a different way of exploring yin and yang: in a role-reversal psychodrama.
Take one day off to be together with your partner, away from family and children. Invite a close friend or therapist as a witness. The witness should be neutral and not get involved in the game itself.
Now you are going to transform yourself into the other person: wear your partner’s clothes, take on their name, mimic the way they hold their body, speak the way they speak, tell the stories they often talk about, and mimic their gestures and mannerisms.
Act out the role in front of each other for a few hours. Take turns. See what comes up. Get your witness or therapist to help you with neutral observations and insights. When you are done, end the process in the heart, with humor and gratitude. Dress yourself once more in your own clothes and come back to your own self.
The best approach to Tantra happens when we can be comfortable in both the yin and yang polarities, alternatively receptive and active.
In a good relationship, each partner knows when to be yin, receptive, allowing the other to shine, talk, and run the show. Each partner also knows how to be yang, to take over, inspire, guide, and decide things. In a good relationship, you alternate between the two. You need both polarities.
Occasionally, of course, the balance may not work, in which case you may both end up being yang at the same time. When this is the case, you might well find yourself butting heads, since you both want to be in charge. If both partners end up yin, each will wait for the other to take the initiative. No spark will be there and nothing will happen.
The spiritual dimension awakens here when we realize that the very best orgasm, including both polarities, is but a fleeting revelation of the light of the divine marriage between Shiva and Shakti. In that moment, one’s individual identity dissolves in the field of universal light.
What I Learned
It is a paradox of spiritual life that everything progresses in the revelation of its opposite. For instance, all too often we believe that before entering a high Tantric practice, we have to be in harmony with our partner.
This is not the case. It is the willingness to show up and be present in the meditation practice that is the point. That is the key that will create balance as the process of the practice continues. This is what dissolves the samskaras, the inner resistances or misunderstandings. They are burned away in the marriage between energy and consciousness.
Together, in harmony, two people can create the most beautiful orgasmic experiences. And this, for me, turns into its opposite, because it is our nature as humans to create moments of perfection and then fall down again into duality, difficulties, and doubt. And so, after finding, once again, the elusive state of the multi-orgasmic response, I understood that it was not the final point of awakening, but just another stepping stone on the way.
However, in a very real sense, the journey is the goal. Evolution from one state to another doesn’t happen when we reach a “better” or “happier” state. Rather, evolution happens when we dissolve whatever prevented us from recognizing the truth that has always been right in front of us, or, rather, within us.
Divinity is our nature, our “Buddha nature.” It is not so much a discovery as a remembrance.
Every moment can be orgasmic. There is no need for the present moment to be different than it is. Then one realizes there is no need to struggle for a better orgasm. One is free to enjoy every moment to the fullest.
Yet, still, in the connection between sex and spirit, orgasm is a privileged moment to stop the mind and enter into the stillness of Shiva consciousness.
As the ancient seers of India put it, “That art thou.” Fullness and emptiness. In this orgasmic moment of disappearing into the unknown, you enter eternity and all is perfect as it is.
The Practice:
Integrating Love and Meditation
Here is a way to integrate meditation and lovemaking.
First, be alone. Sit comfortably in the half-lotus posture, with a straight back, your body and mind relaxed.
Choose a time of silence. Early in the morning around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. is good, or late at night.
Lightly close your eyes. Inhale gently through the nose, internally and silently reciting this bija sound: “Soooooo.”
As you do so, bring your focus and your breath to the center of your head, all the while keeping your eyes closed.
Exhale through the nose. Repeat, internally and silently, this bija sound: “Haaaaaaaaam.”
Continue this way for ten minutes.
This mantra, Soham, means “I am that.”
After ten minutes, cease the exercise and stay completely relaxed and silent, listening to the farthest sounds that you can hear. It may be the rustling of leaves in a tree, or a dog barking, or a car driving away.
Be the witness, consciously aware of all that is. No thoughts, no stories … just this inner vibration, left by the sound Soham, running by itself in silence.
Feel the peace and the inner stillness, the inner silence and spaciousness.
The second stage: the next time you are in an intimate moment with your partner, lying in each other’s arms, see if you can bring the spacious awareness of Soham to the lovemaking experience.
You are making love and yet watching with total awareness. Go slowly. Abandon any goals. Just be with your body, your sensations, your partner. Remain alert and see what happens.
As the fires build in sexual joy,
Enter that blessed place between the legs,
Embrace the holy energies shimmering there,
Follow the rising flow,
Undulating throughout the spine,
Shivering with pleasure.
As the fire intensifies
And flashes upward,
Suspend the breath for a moment.
Throw your whole self in.
Become brilliance in your bodily form.
In union with primordial bliss.48
40. Later in other countries in Europe and then in the USA.
41. See also my book Sexual Ecstasy: The Art of Orgasm, a book dedicated to that session.
42. Located on the upper wall of the vagina.
43. For the technical details of the practice, refer to my book Sexual Ecstasy: The Art of Orgasm.
44. Margot Anand’s Secret Keys to the Ultimate Love Life (box of 3 DVDs) at http://margotanand.com/products/dvds/margot-anands-secret-keys-to-the-ultimate-love-life.
45. Adyashanti, The Way of Liberation: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (Campbell, CA: Open Gate Sangha, 2012), pp. 4–5.
46. Pleasurable point at the junction of the glans and the stem of the penis.
47. For more details, see my book The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1989), p. 257.
48. Lorin Roche, The Radiance Sutras (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2014), Sutra 45.