Many years ago, back when I was 21, I was blessed to fall in love with a very amazing woman who was half-Indian and half-German. One life-changing night, she had fallen asleep before me, and I lay awake beside her in bed. As I looked at her sleeping form, I was filled to overflow with love for her – a love unbound that I had never experienced before. I felt so much love I wondered – what do I do with all this love?
I then heard some words in my mind, in response to this question. ‘Just give her your love.’
It seemed at the time like pretty good advice, and so as I lay there looking at her, I poured my love into her – I imagined it flowing out on my exhale and washing over and into her. I’d never done this before, it just seemed obvious and very natural. What else could I do but share the vastness of this love with my beloved?
What I didn’t expect was for her to wake up, but after 5 or 10 minutes she suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me in the semi-darkness.
‘I need to be with you,’ she said.
I probably looked a bit surprised – I hadn’t poured love into her with the plan of waking her up!
‘What were you doing?’ she asked.
So I explained that I’d been pouring love into her.
She asked me how I’d been doing it, so I told her – through willing it, through wishing it, intending it. She then tried pouring love into me. I suddenly felt a vast wave of tenderness expanding through me, a quality of love I’ve never experienced before. That night we discovered what we called ‘energy sending.’
We stayed up all night, basking and sharing this loving energy with one another. We made love more deeply and tenderly than ever before. In the morning, with the sun rising we literally skipped through the park from my home to hers.
We were utterly high on all the love we had shared, and were wondering if we might have discovered something that no other human had ever discovered (oh to be young and naive again!). We started wondering how we might proclaim it to the world – jump on social media? Write a book? Then my partner wondered aloud if it was anything to do with Tantra.
Hm… maybe we need to get some books.
One of those books was Margot Anand’s tantric classic ‘The Art of Sexual Ecstasy’. Margot was the first teacher to bring neo-tantra to the world, a contemporary form of tantra inspired by the ancient teachings but merging them with modern psychotherapeutic techniques.
What blew my mind as I immersed into her book was the realization that multiple practices and techniques, even the most advanced techniques in the book, we were already doing. We had discovered them spontaneously in the field of love that can exist between two open hearts.
Some would say this could be some past life recall that led to this experience. Maybe it is. Personally I just think it’s hardwired into all of us on some level. We are all intrinsically tantric at the core of our being.
I’m curious…when did you first have a mind-blowing experience with someone you love? Something that didn’t fit into the box of what you believed to be possible? When did you come to realize it might just be tantra?