The Ten Suggestions, part 2

Get related to your body.

Start with moving it. Although exercise doesn't cause happiness, it's a major contributing factor. I heard of a study in which the anti-depressant Zoloft was tested against an exercise regime in a group of clinically depressed subjects. After a certain time, the results were the same, but going forward, exercise surpassed Zoloft's effectiveness. Your mood improves when the energy within your body is moving. Dance, jogging, yoga, tai chi, martial arts, gym workouts, walking, hiking, biking, swimming, etc. are all good. I'm partial to ecstatic dance. Opportunities to learn ballroom dancing, salsa and tango abound here in Portland and probably in your city too. Learning to use your body, take the next steps, which are enjoying and loving your body.

Next, enjoy your body. Experience pleasure. Don't be a slave to it, but definitely serve it. Don't skimp out. The whole point of having a body is to enjoy it, and use it for good. What is good is something that you get to determine. Want to stay unhappy? Then believe what other people say about what pleasures you should and shouldn't experience. (Note: your pleasure should never come at the expense of someone's well-being, including your own.) If you find yourself stumped, experiment with dark chocolate, massage, and burying your face in a large rose for starters.

Then love your body. Appreciate it for what it provides for you: eyesight, transportation, pleasure, opposeable thumb use/grasping, hearing music, and myriad other things we take for granted. Don't compare your body to anyone else's. You will, but just forgive yourself and return to appreciating what you have and taking good care of it.

The relationship one has to one's body could be likened to that of a trainer to a racehorse. In the horse race, rider and horse become one. And the horse will win, or at least compete well, if it's fed well, rested, pampered, and allowed to run. Horses love to run.

What does your body love?

And don't forget: LISTEN to your body. And by this I don't mean simply the growling and gurgling sounds that come from your belly when you're hungry. Your gut has wisdom. Do you feel tension down there? Do you feel gusto down there? People who do not listen to what their guts are telling them about their lives wind up with gut problems—physical ones. Your gut has information about what to do for yourself and others, whom to love, whom to leave, what is your truth, and what is your lie. It may take some time to sit with and sort out when the mind and heart are also involved in the conversation. When in doubt, trust your gut.

The Ten Suggestions, part 1

In March of last year, I responded in this blog—to an article that reported Portland to be the unhappiest city in the country—by coming up with 10 suggestions for being happy. I naturally called them "The 10 Suggestions." An ex-post-bloggo Google search revealed that some others had also coined their own "10 Suggestions," but naturally I think mine are the best.

So let's revisit the 10 Suggestions, one blog entry at at time.

1) Adopt the idea that you are the only person responsible for your own happiness.

Nelson Mandela, who was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for his anti-Apartheid activism, was consigned to hard labor for the duration of the 27 years he served before release. Despite the ill treatment a black political prisoner would have received in Apartheid South Africa, Mandela emerged from prison a leader—not angry, not set upon revenge—and ultimately happy. Clearly, he was the only person looking after his own happiness, and shortly after his release became the first black leader of a post-Apartheid South Africa.

Being responsible for your happiness means being at the cause of your life, and not the effect. Happy people, as the famous Serenity Prayer suggests, either change the things they can or accept the things they can't change, and they have wisdom to know the difference. Changing your world becomes a game worthy of playing hard, and part of the fun is finding your team. If you don't succeed, either try a different tactic or a different direction, and don't take it personally. Play games worth losing.

What if your situation frankly sucks and you cannot change your circumstances?

Indeed, sometimes happiness asks us to simply accept things the way they are. Easier said than done? Start by understanding that you are enough and that "how you are" does not equal "how you feel."

Doing this requires one to step back into what is known as "witness consciousness"—that state of awareness which we simply notice what's going on inside us. If it had a voice it might sound like, "I notice I'm despairing right now." That thought will be quickly followed by any number of other statements, usually not empowering. It's safe enough to say that any other thought you would have would be something besides witness consciousness, which is not emotionally charged one way or the other. Just be aware. Notice what you're experiencing, and then note that you're having an emotional/mental/physical reaction, and then use those thoughts to marshal on your behalf toward another thought pattern or behavior that is empowering. One of the best behaviors to adopt is sharing your state of mind with another person who cares. More people care than you realize, trust me on this.

Next week: Get related to your body.

"Why I too hate Tantra" and upcoming events

When I first began to explore Tantra in the mid-2000s, my friend Robert Allen, who at the time was one of Seattle’s main tantric emissaries, inspired me to deepen my role as a tantric guide. So when I saw the title of his recent blog entry, “Why I hate Tantra,” I had to read it to see what might have gotten into him. (Read it here.) None of my friends and colleagues has a deeper understanding of Tantra than he.

Robert, like many others, is fed up with much of what passes for Tantra these days, and in many ways I agree with him. The deeper my understanding of Tantric mysticism goes, the less content I am to call even what I teach Tantra. Yes, it is “neo-tantra”—that much is beyond debate—but what separates the real thing from what most Americans think of when they hear the word, “Tantra?”

Tantra is not smoking-hot sex bathed in curry and lit by a patchouli-scented candle with a Ravi Shankar CD playing in the background, the Kama Sutra book on the night stand opened to page 69. Tantra doesn’t need to be sexual at all. Tantra at times melds sexuality with the sacred, but sacred sexuality (which I’m a major proponent of and teach as well) does not equal Tantra.

Tantra can be the most confronting, and perhaps, most comforting, of all the spiritual paths known to humans. Tantra is making love to your fear. Tantra is making love to your work or leaving it. Tantra is finding the Divine wherever you look—especially in places they told you you wouldn’t find God. Your most profound encounters with the Divine will most likely come when you’re not looking, but the Divine tends to reveal itself most often to those who take the time and energy to look anywhere.

Most Tantric and, dare I say, spiritual teaching is all about ascent—with the goal being to elevate the spirit, raise the vibration, transcend the suffering, achieve purity or attain higher states of bliss and ecstasy, but the truth is there is the soul has other needs, like getting to the bottom of that mother complex you have been plagued by all your life. Spirit is good, and seeks to rise, but the soul is the part of us that is like water—it seeks descent and depth. Soul is of the soil and ashes and earth, which perhaps is why Tantric practitioners in India do their rituals in graveyards, with the ashes and bones of immolated people. Only when you are ready to get down and dirty, to smear yourself with the grief, tears, and blood of your own suffering, and maybe mine too, and let out a baleful wail, will you be ready for enlightenment. Today’s best-selling spiritual writers and religious teachers don’t tell you that to be enlightened, you must first be endarkened. But it’s the truth.

Of course, grief, tears, and blood are difficult to sell to a world desperately trying to put a band-aid on any kind of suffering it encounters.

Dear readers, are you ready to go deep into your body and get serious about healing those deep, wounded places? Are you ready to cross a living threshold, or are you content to buy a Kama Sutra candle at the Exotic Love Boutique, practice your orgasms, and call it good?

Maybe you’re thinking, "Where’s my Nag Champa incense? Where’s my day-long orgasm?” If you’re ready to cross a threshold, to live on the edge of your personal magic and power, you have a great opportunity on July 31 when Michael Mirdad guides the Portland Tantric Meetup in a day-long intensive. Michael is the real thing. After July 17, the $100 tuition increases to $125, so save some money and register ASAP. I look forward to sharing this journey with you.

As we ramp up for fall, plan for the return of our two-part series on the essence of Shiva and Shakti, Massage A Trois, and other opportunities to explore the longings you carry in your soul.

Speaking of which, check out my other meetup, the Spiritual Growth and Adventure Meetup.

Many blessings, and enjoy our spectacular weather,

Owl