Storm the Husky Puppy is here for our talk.
So you might hear some bone chewing in the background.
Thank you for your patience.
So today this is our second class of our tantric journey.
Today we're talking about our connection within.
This is really important because whenever we hear the word tantra,
If we had heard this maybe in the east in certain areas,
We might go,
Ah,
It's a spiritual journey where you are seeking union with God,
And there'd be no question about it.
But in most of the world,
When we think of tantra,
The number one thing that I hear is,
Well,
I can't study tantra because I don't have a partner.
Because we believe it's about relationships.
We believe it's about sex.
It's about achieving this blissful,
Happy state in sexual union,
Which is certainly possible.
But it's not the first step by a long shot.
And in fact,
A lot of people,
When they would come to study tantra with me,
If they were in a couple,
I would often recommend that they study individually,
And then do the couples course.
It never happened because they really wanted to do it as a couple,
And you know,
That's cool.
But it's actually more effective if we do it individually.
Because the path of tantra is about joy.
It's about happiness.
It's about being thrilled to be alive.
It's about waking up every day,
Regardless of circumstances,
And feeling this gratitude inside that I'm alive.
And then feeling this optimism of the infinite possibilities that today could hold.
And this is what being tantric really is all about.
It has nothing to do with anyone else,
And it has nothing to do with what's going on in our life right now.
One of my favorite tantric teachers was Osho Bhagavan.
Osho Bhagavan Rajneesh.
He used to always tell the story of Suraha.
He lived in the king's palace.
He was born to a Brahmanic,
The Brahmanic caste,
The highest,
The priest caste in India.
One day,
He just said,
I don't want to live this life anymore.
And he felt called to go down to the marketplace to find his new guru.
And there he saw a woman.
She was an arrowsmith,
And she was making,
That's how I picture her,
She's holding the arrow,
Kind of with her eyes staring at the edge.
He looked at her,
And he realized that she was his next teacher.
And of course,
This went against all the rules.
She was a woman,
For one.
She wasn't of the Brahman caste.
She wasn't even Hindu.
And so the king and the queen,
They were all like,
Oh my gosh,
What's Suraha doing?
But he asked her,
I would like to study with you and be your student.
And she said,
Sure.
So off they went,
And they lived in a little hut on the cremation grounds.
In India,
The cremation grounds are literally places where they burn the dead bodies.
This is not a happy place.
This isn't a neat graveyard,
Even,
Which can be difficult and depressing to live within.
You know,
I don't need to go into detail about what it must be like being on these grounds.
And not only is that what's happening,
It's filled with very unhappy,
Grieving people.
And this is where she took him to teach him how to be tantric.
They would live there,
And they would do practice,
And they did everything they needed to do,
Or whatever,
Right?
And he achieved total bliss.
To experience complete bliss inside,
Independent of our circumstances.
It's such an incredible story,
Because that's the thing that stands in the way of our being tantric,
Because that's really what this is about.
The connection within is how to be tantric.
From there,
We connect with everyone else.
From there,
We go out and experience the world.
But if we can't do that inside,
We can't do it out there either.
It's impossible.
If I can't paint a picture in my own living room,
I can't paint a picture out there.
I'm the same person.
And this is one of the things that we really believe.
We're like,
Oh,
No,
No,
But you don't understand what my life is like.
You don't understand what I'm living with.
You don't understand my life.
You don't understand what I'm doing.
You don't understand what I'm living with.
You don't understand my struggles.
And it's like,
It's not the point.
Because within every situation,
We have choice.
And the tantric path is within.
So the foundation of being tantric,
Of the connection within,
Begins with our connection with our divinity.
And that's why our circumstances are irrelevant.
Because no matter where we are,
We also are fully infinite divine beings.
I may be,
In this incarnation,
Katrina Boss.
I'm five foot something,
Seven,
And I'm 53 years old,
And I live in Canada,
And I was born to Vic and Isabel,
And maybe this is my life.
But that is only a portion of who I am.
I am also this infinite being.
So imagine you bring that consciousness to everything we do.
Everything.
Imagine speaking.
And every time we speak,
I am always speaking in full consciousness.
I am never just reacting.
I am never just doing something I was conditioned to do.
I am always fully aligned.
I am always fully aligned vertically and listening.
With every word I say.
Imagine.
Because what's interesting about this divine and physical aspect is in the tantric path,
They are actually inseparable.
They were only separated,
If we look at a bit of history,
Especially in India.
Tantra as a teaching is around the world,
It's in every indigenous culture,
Every indigenous culture where the divine and the physical are one.
But if we go to India,
Because that's normally where we think of tantra as originating,
And then it's spread to China and Tibet and all kinds of places,
But when the Aryans came into India from the north and they installed the caste system,
And they basically said,
We are the Brahmins,
We are the upper caste,
And then we have the government militia,
And then we have sort of the white collar workers,
And then we have the blue collar workers,
And then we have all the untouchables that are sort of no value to the Brahmins.
The tantric said,
No,
That's not real.
There's no such thing as leveling of humans.
No one is born into a higher level than another.
And think of that alone.
Think of that idea alone.
That as we walk through life,
No one is above another person.
There is no such thing as a royal family.
They are not,
They may call themselves a royal family in the same way a mafia family might consider themselves a royal family.
But there's no such thing.
Every human is the same.
That idea alone can shift our entire world.
When we go to work and we understand that there is no one who can judge us,
There is no one who can grade us,
There is no one who can decide whether what we're doing is right or wrong.
Imagine the freedom when every single person is equal,
Regardless of gender,
Caste,
Position in society,
Whatever,
Education,
Every single person is equal.
Imagine how differently we live.
So that was one of the first things.
Tantrics were often considered rebels,
But they weren't actually rebels.
They were just saying no to this systemic thinking,
This idea that there's people over other people and who are allowed to dominate,
Who are allowed to oppress.
And they said,
No,
There's no such thing.
And so in Tantric culture,
All genders are equal.
There's no gender.
There's no race.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
There's no gender.
And this idea has spread all over the world,
Or maybe it landed in all the world at the same time,
I don't know.
But the idea that these people,
The Brahmin caste,
They are the ones who connect to God.
Or the priests or the preachers in the church,
They are the ones who interpret the sacred text.
They are the shepherds.
They are the ones who tell us.
In more modern spiritual teachings,
That the guru will tell you,
The teacher will tell you,
You are not capable of this.
This isn't true.
Because intrinsically,
We are already divine.
This is the teaching of Tantra.
We are already divine.
Every single one of us here is fully divine,
Fully human.
There is no separation.
So imagine feeling that in our lives.
Imagine sitting down and reading a book.
And you're reading the book.
You have a physical book.
You're reading some interesting ideas,
Maybe about humanity.
You are also listening with this much deeper self,
All at the same time.
It's not like we switch.
Well,
Now I'm going to listen with my personality,
And now I'm going to listen with my divine self.
Every being is absorbing what we're reading.
Imagine making love in this way.
That you sit with this other beautiful human,
Who is also this indivisible,
Divine human creation.
And you come to lovemaking with that kind of consciousness.
You don't need to know anything else.
There's no tricks.
There's no nothing.
You just come with that kind of awe and wonderment.
And then you just explore as the divine beings we are.
But we struggle to have that kind of confidence,
Because we've been disconnected from that.
Maybe we believe that God is this father God up there,
Full of judgment and wrath and anger,
Or happy,
Or whatever.
We try to appease the gods in order to have grace or have favor.
But if we believe that whatever God is,
And I'm saying the word God,
Whatever that means to you,
Outside of all religious definition,
To really tune in with yourself and say,
Am I really just a meat sack?
Am I really just this bag of bones?
Really?
It's even interesting,
If you look at me,
If you look at my face,
Or if you are listening to the recording of this,
And you look at someone,
If you look at another human,
Who are you looking at?
If you picture me as a skeleton,
A skeleton talking,
And then maybe I have skin,
Maybe I have muscle,
Maybe I have hair,
But who's talking?
Where is this spirit coming from?
What is that spirit a part of?
And these aren't questions that can be answered.
And this is the danger,
Of course,
With using a word like God,
Using a word like divine,
Using a word like supreme consciousness,
Brahman,
Whatever we want to use,
Because it tries to define something that's undefinable,
Ineffable.
And that's where the tantric path is so much about meditation.
It's so much about experience,
That we literally have to just experience something,
And even if we can't describe it,
That's okay.
Because that's probably the truth.
Whatever you can't describe,
And if you go later,
And you sit and you meditate,
And maybe you do it in a place that's easy for you to feel that oneness.
Maybe you're sitting in nature,
Maybe you're sitting by the ocean,
Maybe you are sitting in an old church somewhere,
And you feel that presence,
Even if you can't name it.
That's the presence we want to live with every second of our day,
Whatever that is for you.
So you imagine the wonder we would embrace life with.
When we walk around,
And we really recognize the miracle that life is,
And then all of a sudden someone says,
Hey,
Do you want some orange sherbet?
And you're like,
Yeah,
I've never had that before.
Or someone says,
Hey,
You want to go on a car ride?
It's like there's this childish joy in life,
When we really get how divine we are.
And that's when we actually start to live Tantrically.
There's no rules.
It's all inside.
It's all our inner philosophy.
It's all what we bring to every single thing we do.
So speaking with consciousness.
First of all,
You're sitting and you're with another person.
And because we're conscious,
We see the big picture.
Maybe it's a child,
Maybe it's a partner,
Maybe it's a parent,
Maybe it's a colleague.
And we're very aware of our intention.
Why am I speaking with this person?
Am I just killing time,
And we're just being silly and just saying fun things?
Awesome.
Am I truly wanting to commune with this person?
Am I truly wanting to connect with this person?
Well,
Then I'm going to speak differently.
Do I really want to communicate the idea that I'm really upset right now?
I'm angry.
And it's important that you know this.
I don't have to scream and yell.
Because the right words will come if I'm conscious.
And the words will come that fulfill the intention that I truly want to have.
It changes everything.
And part of that,
Again,
There's that Viktor Frankl quote that I love,
That between stimulus and response,
There is a space.
And in that space lies all of our freedom.
It's the same when we're speaking to people.
That as long as we stay conscious and we stay present,
We are bringing our entire being to this interaction.
That is being tantric.
As I used to say,
It's easy if you say it fast.
But that takes a lot of training.
That may take a lot of meditation and pranayama to slow the nervous system down,
To de-trigger ourselves.
Because we have a lot of triggers in difficult conversations.
So we may need to do a lot of work.
That's why tantra,
This is the journey of tantra,
To undo all those things.
Because of course our triggers come from a time that we felt disconnected.
We were afraid.
We're afraid to be alone.
We're afraid to be hurt.
We're afraid to be whatever.
But as we start to reconnect with the truth of who we are,
We realize,
Well,
There's nothing to be afraid of.
I'm never alone.
And I'll always have whatever I need.
So there's nothing to be afraid of.
And slowly the triggers disappear.
And we're able to be conscious.
So again,
To really recognize that tantra is a path,
A path of transformation,
A path of shifting ourselves out of that only human state,
That almost bound state,
Where we don't believe we have choice and we don't believe we create our own lives,
Into that place where we know we create our whole lives.
And we enjoy it.
We really love it.
One of the most joyful things about living in a tantric way is that we make choices in our life from our soul.
Because we're connected to our soul.
Very often we live in this very disconnected way and I have to make choices because that person expects it or even my brain expects me to do something.
But what about our soul?
It's like we've forgotten why we incarnated.
Every single one of us is so unique.
How would we ever be making similar choices?
When you think of the things that put us in bondage,
Like,
Well,
I don't want to make that choice because no one would understand.
Well,
Why would they ever understand your choice?
Like you're an infinite being from who knows what galaxy.
Why would they ever understand?
Again,
These are some of the philosophies that we have to let go of in order to live tantrically.
Which is why oftentimes a lot of the tantric path is just letting go of the things that limit us.
Because we're already perfect.
We just have to let go of the fears and the ideas and the programs and the systemic teaching.
Very similar to the tantrics of old.
So suddenly we have to have this awareness of our inner satya,
Our inner truth.
Who am I really?
What is my truth?
What is my path right now?
And then life becomes very exciting.
It's like our edge.
It's the only way through.
It's what is my truth.
And then we step into that truth without fear,
Without attachment.
And we just do it for the thrill of it.
It's like the true adrenaline junkie.
Only all we're doing is living our soul's path.
This is where the bliss comes.
This is where the ecstasy comes.
It doesn't have to happen in coitus.
It can happen in the thrill of simply making that choice that's on our path.
Because then whole new doors open up.
Whole new possibilities open up and now we are on an adventure.
Because the wild thing is when we access that soul,
We are accessing infinity.
We're accessing something that we weren't trained to do.
That our parents didn't do.
That our family didn't do.
That is outside the clan mentality.
So a door has opened into a whole new world that is made for us.
It's perfect.
And the beautiful thing is too,
It brings this lovely humility.
Because people might say,
Wow,
I can't believe you did this and this and this.
And you're literally like,
I didn't do anything.
I just followed my truth.
Blindly.
Absolutely blindly.
I just followed my truth.
And then this and that.
Yeah,
But look how it turned out.
It's like,
Yeah,
I had no idea it was going to turn out like that.
Because I had no attachment to it.
It wasn't about my brain.
It wasn't about meeting other people's needs.
It was just from my heart.
To live like that is really exciting.
But of course,
In order to do that,
We have to be really conscious of who we are.
It's that ancient saying,
To know thyself.
This is so important.
Because if we want to live this way,
We have to be aware.
We have to be aware of our shadow side and our light.
And I don't mean shadow in a negative way.
I mean shadow in the parts of us that we have oppressed because they're not acceptable.
Or the parts of us maybe that we've learned from our family that aren't even us at all.
And when we can be conscious of the shadow side,
We don't have to heal it.
We don't have to be perfect.
We just have to be aware of it.
And then all of a sudden you're having a conversation with someone.
You're thinking,
You're in that gap between stimulus and response.
And you're thinking,
Hmm,
I do know I have some issues here.
And I know this feels awfully familiar.
And you can verbalize this.
You can say,
I know that I struggle with this.
So I'm really trying to figure out if this situation is just a repeating of the old.
Or is this new and we really need to look at it?
We can do that when we're fully aware.
And again,
That's us too.
We might be divine pure energy.
But we are also this perhaps karmic laden,
Ancestral laden personality.
That's a thing.
So all of a sudden the number of things in my life,
The women in my family,
For generations and generations,
One,
Have died of cancer.
And two,
Have selflessly given up their lives for whoever it was they were married to,
Their children,
Whatever.
It's so woven into my soul.
It's so woven into my soul.
It's woven into my training in a way that I can barely see sometimes.
But the more aware of it I am,
The more I can bring that consciousness into everything I do.
This is still tantric.
We don't have to have arrived.
We don't have to be enlightened to be tantric.
We just have to be whole.
And that means bringing every single aspect of who we are together,
The things we've sorted out,
The things we've struggled with,
Everything.
We just bring it all together.
Because again,
We have a divine light about it.
We're not judging the parts of us that are struggling,
So they get to play.
The divine self knows,
You know,
That's why we're here.
We're here to feel emotions.
We're here to be angry.
We're here to be happy.
We're here to be sad.
We're here to be everything.
It's only our limited human side.
Our limited human side judges the shadow and creates division and all that kind of thing.
So one of my favorite sayings also comes from Osho.
And he used to say that his goal in life and his recommendation to anyone is to live as Zorba the Buddha.
And of course,
Zorba was Zorba the Greek.
And it was a story about a man who just lived life,
Wine woman in song,
Just loved life to the fullest.
And of course,
The idea is to fully live life.
But with the consciousness of the Buddha.
This is what it is to be connected within.
Fully enjoying our desires,
Fully desiring.
And I don't mean,
This isn't like a hedonistic thing.
It might be.
Or it might be fully enjoying a life of solitude and books and libraries and quiet coffees with friends.
That might be your Zorba the Buddha.
Or it might be the most passionate hedonistic thing.
But the key is you are 100% present all the time.
And it is in line with your soul.
We're not just doing it to spite our family or the church or whoever else might judge us and tell us what we're doing is wrong.
We're living fully from our soul.
And the beautiful thing about this is when we can truly live like this,
We start to get to live in the higher levels of consciousness that we talked about in previous talks.
And when we talked about David Hawkins levels of consciousness.
And David Hawkins wrote a book called Power vs.
Force.
Where he looked at all the levels of consciousness that we can live at.
And the lowest is shame.
Then there's guilt.
And I don't remember the rest of the order.
It might be anger,
Apathy,
Grief,
Desire,
Pride.
Like all these things that we really struggle with.
Because we have some blind spots.
We have some struggles.
We maybe have karmic patterns that we're working out.
Things like that.
And there's nothing wrong with living at any level.
That's just where we're at.
It's all good.
Then we hit courage.
And of course courage,
You can almost feel the introduction of a new consciousness.
Because suddenly,
No matter what's going on,
There's some part of us that sort of rises up and says,
Well,
Wait a minute.
I'm not bound to this.
I can make a choice.
And we feel connected enough to that consciousness that courage rises.
And I say,
I will do this.
And it's okay where the cards fall.
Or the chips fall.
I can't remember.
It's okay.
Because it feels right inside.
That's the beginning of that I am.
That I exist.
The soul exists now in my day-to-day life.
And then from there,
The levels of consciousness,
The next one is neutrality.
Where we actually look at life and suddenly we're not so clear what's right or wrong.
Because suddenly maybe circumstances are right for everyone.
I don't understand it completely,
But perhaps everything's just fine.
Or it just is what it is.
It's not fine or good or bad or anything.
It just is what it is.
And then suddenly we see our own life.
Because this is what this is about.
It's our connection within.
We see our own life with neutrality.
So all of a sudden,
If I go for this job,
If I get it,
Awesome.
If I don't get it,
Awesome.
Like you're truly neutral.
Because what do we care?
We are divine incarnate beings.
How could that one thing throw us off so much?
Then the next level is willingness.
And all of a sudden an inspiration comes and it's like,
Really?
Okay,
I'll try that.
And it becomes very joyful.
Life becomes very interesting when we live in willingness.
Because then suddenly it's like,
Okay.
As long as the yes is in alignment with our truth.
There's a saying in the tantric text that you need to be open to everything.
And that has been misinterpreted in a lot of the neo-tantra world to mean you have to be open to everything sexually.
You have to be open to everything out there.
That's not it.
The idea is that when you are sitting in meditation and an idea comes or a truth comes or a calling comes,
That we need to be open to that calling.
And it's true that we may have to change some philosophies that we accumulated over our life,
Maybe from our parents or someone else.
But we'll have to shift our philosophy so that we can take the next step in our life.
And that's where we say yes to things.
We don't say yes just because something exists in the world.
We say yes to what is on our path.
That's what matters.
And then the levels continue and they go into acceptance.
And then to reason,
Joy,
Peace,
Enlightenment,
Love.
And you imagine living like that.
These are the divine states.
These are the states.
And I don't mean divine out there.
I mean divine within.
Almost like as we climb,
More of our divinity has merged with our physicality.
I often think of it like a continuum almost.
If you imagine over on the right side,
You are in the pure divine state.
And over on the left side,
You are in the purely physical state.
And neither one has any connection to the other.
But we live somewhere in between.
Maybe we oscillate back and forth all the time.
But ideally,
We are kind of right in the middle where we are fully merged all the time.
But it's not like every single one of us here is on that continuum.
We all have a bit of the divine,
A bit of the physical,
Whatever,
In all different permutations and combinations.
And all we have to do is every day go within,
Listen,
And speak the words that come to us.
Manifest the things that we feel called to do.
That's it.
It has to have action attached to it.
We actually have to do the things.
And then that's what makes it real.
Because sometimes in the tantric path we get very,
Or in the world,
We get very stuck in the physical world.
The world out there that's just the secular world of zero faith or spirituality.
Or we get stuck in the philosophical place or the spiritual place.
But we never manifest it out into the world.
So the key is that if we have a truth,
We must manifest it.
We must speak it.
We must create it.
We must do it.
Or else we are not being tantric either.
It's not just about sitting in meditation.
It's about fully,
Fully living.
And it's really,
Really joyful.
And then from that place,
We take it out into the world.
We have relationships.
We have children.
We have parents.
We have colleagues.
We have dogs.
We have friends.
And we're perpetually playing in this beautiful tantric balance within,
No matter what we're doing.
A new relationship of five months,
Scared to be too vulnerable,
Thoughts.
Yeah,
This is a beautiful example of having this wholeness inside.
Because you imagine you're in a new relationship.
But your journey is always about connecting within.
There may be another person in your world.
But all your interactions with that person is about you.
Always.
So if you are on a tantric journey,
Then you're in this new relationship.
And they say things.
Or they do something.
And you notice your own reaction.
And I say reaction,
Not response.
A response is that space between the stimulus and response where there's a space.
And we actually have a chance to respond to what's happening.
But oftentimes we react.
We react.
We act in a similar way as before.
So when we're in a new relationship,
It's very interesting to watch our reactions.
Because there are clues about our own path.
And especially in a new relationship,
Especially today in 2023,
To really honor your truth and to know that nothing is too small to talk about.
Because again,
This is sharing your wholeness with the other person.
Because very often when we're in a new relationship,
We create a separate persona that will make this person happy.
Because maybe we're desperate to be in a relationship.
We don't want to be alone.
I don't want to be dating anymore.
So I'm just going to put my soul aside.
I'm going to put my truth aside while I keep this person happy,
Whatever.
And what if instead we come fully ourselves?
And again,
This is not like me for who I am,
All my faults.
That's a whole weird,
Twisted,
Toxic thing.
I don't even know where that came from.
If I want you to love me,
It doesn't mean I'm a jerk.
It doesn't mean I'm mean to you.
It doesn't mean I'm childish.
It doesn't mean I'm manipulatively emotional.
Those are all just manipulation strategies.
Those are power or force plays.
No,
They're not power plays.
They're force plays,
Really.
No one has to accept that.
Because that's how you're being treated.
But if you come in kindness,
Because again,
If you love yourself,
We have this connection within,
And I truly love who I am,
Shadows,
Issues,
Family history,
Whatever.
If I really love myself and I'm really kind to me inside,
Then that's what I'm going to present to you,
Too.
I'm not going to vomit all over you and expect you to like it.
I'm going to say,
Well,
This is my truth about this that really bothers me that you said that.
And they can say anything they want.
Well,
That's not reasonable,
And you're being overly emotional,
And you're just premenstrual.
And I could say,
Maybe,
Still true.
Because I love me.
This is this connection within.
This is this inner love.
And that's who I bring everywhere.
And so in a new relationship,
That's our goal.
Just be us.
Be us.
Be kind.
But again,
If we find ourselves defensive against someone,
We have to look inside.
What are they triggering?
What are they hitting that we don't like about ourselves,
That we judge about ourselves?
Because if they say something to us that is nonsense,
We're just going to go,
Sorry,
That's not true.
There's no emotion to it.
There's nothing.
And if they continue,
It's like,
We might be a mismatch.
I don't know why you can't hear me,
But it's really important that you do.
But you can't hear me.
But again,
Because we have this wholeness inside,
The relationship,
I'm not codependent on the relationship either.
It's always a choice.
What do you think of how social anxiety can affect someone living in a tantric way?
Tantra is a path that we're always on.
We never graduate.
Because it's almost like we figure something out,
And then the world expands.
And then we figure something out,
And the world expands.
Because it's an infinite,
Evolving universe.
So we are always learning.
So if I was on a tantric path,
And I was struggling with social anxiety,
Then that would be my next journey.
I would go somewhere,
In public perhaps,
And I would take baby steps.
And I would sit and pray.
And remember,
This is a spiritual path.
And I would pray for guidance.
And I would ask,
Where does this come from?
What is this social anxiety?
What is the philosophy that I hold in my mind that makes me frightened and nervous?
Is there trauma that is unresolved,
That is causing me to be unhappy?
It's a journey.
And then we ask,
What do I do?
What is my step?
And we hear the calling,
And maybe the step is,
Join a dance class.
Join an art class.
Volunteer at the local shelter.
Maybe there's a call.
This is the courage.
This is the stepping into living tantrically.
And we do the thing,
Because we hear it inside,
That this is my journey in life.
And then we continue to walk through it.
And then we continue to evolve,
Until there is no social anxiety.
And then that resolves,
And the world expands again.
So thank you so much for being here.
And I hope you have a wonderful day.
